Internet traffic is difficult to measure -- 'hits', 'unique visitors', etc. give only a rough measure of actual site popularity, and since most sites don't make their statistics public it is almost impossible to make meaningful site-vs.-site comparisons.
The Alexa rankings are also only a rough guide, with obvious drawbacks, but at least allow for comparisons among sites and give a general sense of site-popularity.
Note that these rankings indicate relative popularity: it is possible for a site to be ranked higher in week X despite having less users than in week Y (as long as sites that were ahead in the rankings in week Y lost even more visitors in week X).
Our experience is that there is only a rough correlation between actual traffic increases and decreases and Alexa-chart movement, at least on a day-to-day basis (which may be entirely due to the fact that it is relative, not absolute numbers that are being measured, while we track the absolute numbers); over longer periods of time, however, the correlation is stronger and the Alexa data offers a good approximation of user-interest growth.
The complete review's 3-month Alexa-ranking only broke through the 100,000 level in 2004 (as they note, "Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant").
The best 3-month average recorded to date (24 May 2010) was 29,101, first reached 4 December 2005.

For data specifically on the Literary Saloon see also the eXTReMe Tracking meter (also with some drawbacks, but giving a rough idea of interest in the weblog).